In this gripping short play, David Mamet combines mercurial intelligence with genuinely Hitchcockian menace. The Cryptogram is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing—the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers. On a night in 1959 a boy is waiting to go on a camping trip with his father. His mother wants him to go to sleep. A family friend is trying to entertain them—or perhaps distract them. Because in the dark corners of this domestic scene, there are rustlings that none of the players want to hear. And out of things as innocuous as a shattered teapot and a ripped blanket, Mamet re-creates a child terrifying discovery that the grownups are speaking in code, and that that code may never be breakable.Review“First-rate…spooky, elliptical, full of wit. . . . Not in any stage literature that I know has childhood been as movingly evoked as it is in The Cryptogram.” —Vincent Canby, The New York Times “Heart stopping. . . . Where other dramatists are writing melodrama about the dysfunctional family, Mamet has written high tragedy.” —Iris Fanger, The Boston Herald“Powerful. . . . His most personal work. . . . A whodunit with the it waiting to happen. . . . Spooky and exciting.” —Jack Kroll, Newsweek“Daring, dark, complex, brilliant. . . . I suspect that in time it will take its place among Mamet’s major works.” —John Lahr, The New YorkerFrom the Inside FlapIn this gripping family tragedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross endows ordinary language with Hitchcockian menace and Kafkaesque powers of disorientation. This intriguing play is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing--the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers. Views: 8
How a team of vagabonds made a charge at football history The year 1963 percolated with dreams—big dreams. Martin Luther King Jr. had one, and he articulated it to an audience of a quarter of a million people assembled in a commitment to civil rights. President John F. Kennedy had his own dreams, one of which involved sending a man to the moon. Prosperity and new technology fostered the belief that in the USA anything was possible. In western Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Steelers, their fans, and the Irish American family that owned the team also had a dream: to end 30 years of futility on the field and bring the city its first NFL championship. Author Rudy Dicks recreates the Steelers' 1963 season game by game and profiles the ragtag squad of rejects, misfits, and scalawags that coach Buddy Parker jury-rigged into a contender. He shows how a group of unsung players banded together to overcome tough breaks, injuries, and a losing tradition, challenging the more glamorous... Views: 8
Product DescriptionLove and wizardry don't mix--and neither do magic and the church. When the wizard Daimbert discovers the woman he loves is going to marry someone else, he flees to the nearby city of Caelrhon. Even though strange creatures of wild magic have been spotted in the city, no one wants him there, not the bishop of the cathedral, not the crown prince, not the city council, not even the masters of institutionalized wizardry. But Daimbert senses sinister forces at work, and besides, he's just met a very intriguing witch.... Views: 8
Magic fades. Darkness rises.Darion Ulther and his family have carved out a simple life for themselves in the untamed hinterlands of a wild realm, far from lords and kingdoms and warfare. After destroying the last existing record of a powerful spell capable of crippling magic itself, they assumed they were safe from the machinations of Dathrond's power-hungry ruler.They were wrong.A new threat has emerged in the east, and with it a startling shift in the symmetry between magic and nature. When the Five Realms fall into preternatural crisis, Darion and his loved ones will set out on an adventure to restore balance to the realms – and, if they are fortunate, to awaken the Mage Song once more, for good and all. Views: 8
When security specialist Javier Cortez boards the Medina corporate jet, the last person he expects to see is his former lover, Victoria Palmer. Their relationship had been fiery and all-consuming…until one year ago when he had done the one thing she couldn’t forgive. So why was she here, now? How, after all these months, could the fire between them as hot as ever? Javier didn’t like surprises, but he realized that this was a perfect opportunity to get her alone…and to make her his. Forever. Views: 8
Jacob is a nice and devoted husband. He puts the needs of his wife, Rachel, above his own. Regardless of his efforts, his wife doesn't seem to appreciate him for the great guy that he is and she betrays his trust in the most damaging way. Her betrayal causes him to consider the curse of his gentlemanly ways. Views: 7
Gabrielle Carelton is one of Queen Elizabeth's most devoted ladies-in-waiting. But her loyalty is put to the test when Her Majesty commands her to marry Scotsman Collin Douglas. Then, on the eve of her wedding, Gabrielle is kidnapped by Collin's twin brother--and not even Good Queen Bess can save her. Views: 7
More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USAFrom Publishers WeeklyA narrator whose outre sexual habits are as meticulously chronicled as an episode in Kraft-Ebbing's Pyschopathia Sexualis proves to be both a richly mined satirical vein and a hindrance in this ingenious, offbeat romantic fable from Nicholson (Still Life with Volkswagons), a British novelist whose U.S. reputation is on the rise. The unnamed hero is a foot fetishist, albeit a decidedly likable, well-groomed type, given to standing on London streets and posing as a fashion-industry PR consultant to ask women intimate questions about their feet. When Catherine, a statuesque, American sexual adventuress wearing "spike-heeled, zebra-skin shoes," invites him home for a night of wild, fetishistic sex, he thinks his prayers have been answered. Her feet are "a wonder of nature" and they happen to fit, Cinderella-like, a pair of especially exotic shoes the narrator spies one day in a shop window belonging to Harold Wilmer, a morose artisan of baroque footware who agrees to make a series of special shoes for Catherine and the narrator to incorporate into their sex life. Interspersed throughout are large doses of foot trivia and digressive accounts of the narrator's obsessions, from stealing women's shoes to compiling an enormous archive of scrapbooks, videos and some particularly outrageous FM's ("fuck-me shoes"). But just when the novel threatens to become little more than an archive unto itself, things turn around. Catherine gets cold feet and dumps the narrator, who learns that she is involved with a suspicious photographer named Kramer, who appears to be kinkier even than he is. When Kramer is mysteriously murdered and Catherine disappears, a particulary sinister police detective enters his life and confiscates his archive. It's not Nicholson's most ambitious book, but those who aren't too grossed out will enjoy this fiendish satire of a culture obsessed with sex, power and kinky apparel. First serial to Grand Street. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsWildly prolific British satirist Nicholson (Still Life With Volkswagens, 1995, etc.) offers another black comedy of obsession, this time from the viewpoint of a foot fetishist. Right from the start Nicholson's unnamed narrator tells all about his swift descent ``to hell in a shoe box,'' giving the reader an obsessive's-eyeview of every nuance of foot- and shoe- fetishism. The otherwise unremarkable hero has given up on love but never tires of searching for the perfect foot. He has a giant archive of women's shoes, photos of shoes, photos of feet, articles on foot fetishism, anything and everything to do with female feet, and he proudly lays bare his soul to the ladies whose soles he desires. Fraudulently passing himself off as a researcher, he stands outside shoestores asking women to take part in a survey, which eventually leads to him photographing, then propositioning, women with attractive feet. One day the perfect feet do appear, attached to an attractive American named Catherine, who actually loves to have her feet worshipped. The happy couple stumble upon a man who creates specialty shoes for serious shoe lovers. Seeing Catherine's Michelangelo-like feet, the shoemaker, too, is overcome with their beauty and offers, for free, to make shoes for her for the rest of her life. These elaborate creations generally include snakeskin, bone, metal, and all sorts of other intimidating materials. Eventually, however, Catherine gets cold feet (pardon the pun) about the escalatingly strange relationship and runs off with a commercial foot-photographer, angering both narrator and shoemaker to a murderous degree. While the plot is threadbare and the book slight, Nicholson once again demonstrates his biting wit and his unmatched eye for capturing modern-day compulsions. A darkly funny tale with a kick even for the most foot-phobic. (First serial to Grand Street) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Views: 7
Baxter Green isn't like everyone else. While most people would forget about the little details of everyday life, Baxter never forgets—not pain, not hurt, not embarrassment. In fact, Baxter never forgets anything—not even a string of account numbers, flashed before his eyes by his mother's criminal boyfriend, Dink, for use in a credit card scam. Years after his testimony has locked Dink away, Baxter and his mother are in a new town, trying to forget the danger Dink brought into their lives. Baxter wants to hide his unique ability, but it becomes increasingly more difficult when he reconnects with Hallie, a girl from his childhood who has lived on in his memory long after she has forgotten him. Can Baxter win Hallie's heart? Loretta Ellsworth's newest novel is one readers will never forget. Views: 7
